Are Some Figures More Rare Than Others?

A question for some of you big collectors out there.I was wondering if some of the carded figures are more rare than others.
Did Palitoy/Kenner produce more of one particular figure than others.
I know the 12 backs are pretty rare and ESB21's ect but there always seems to be plenty of 12 backs kicking around on ebay.
I'm still trying to get a full AFA graded set with each figure on it's earliest release.
I mean the 21 back Fett is considered rare but seems to be easy to get hold of if you want to pay that much.
Can't remember the last time I saw a graded ESB Dengar or 4-Lom.
Are ESB figures harder to get hold of than Star Wars ones?

Lee Gregory said:

I mean the 21 back Fett is considered rare but seems to be easy to get hold of if you want to pay that much.

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Confusing expensive and rare is a common problem.

It also depends on how you are breaking it down - if you include front (with or without offers) and cardback types then there are some very hard to find items.

Also if you expand it out to foreign items Lili Ledy is particulalry hot at the moment. A ROTJ MOC Palitoy Leia or Power Droid auction would probably go into meltdown (well I doubt it would survive the off ebay offers for more than a coupe of hours).

The answer depends on how you define your collecting and is very open ended.

Some people think the Kenner 65 back Snowtrooper is rare but I've owned 3 of them in the last 18 months and seen 8-10 of them sell on ebay (mosty properly labelled and not under the radar) with an average price of about Ã'£30 - not bad for a carded variation that wasn't known to exist 2/3 years ago.

I only collect ROTJ MOC so can't sensibly comment on your ESB / SW question.

If you are only after graded figures that will certainly be skewing things a bit. Relatively, there are far more graded 12 backs than common ESB/ROTJ figures, purely because the return on getting the card graded is more.

In a worst case scenario if you buy a ROTJ Klaatu for Ã'£15 spend Ã'£15 on getting him graded (thats a guess) you probably wouldn't get Ã'£30 back for him if you sold him on.

If you bought a 12 back C3PO for Ã'£100, spent Ã'£15 getting him graded you'd get at least Ã'£200 if you sold him on.

a lot of "rarity" ideas are based on facts 10+ years old. when i first started collecting, i thought i'd never see a yak face or vinyl caped jawa, i had only heard about them and seen them in books.

as soon as ebay came along, there is several of them on there every week. the vinyl caped jawa still probably holds the crown for what is perceived as the rarest figure, yet the tri logo one is far more rare in my experience.

i think they probably made more of the popular characters, then they must have sold a lot more too. i don't think that in the majority of cases, any figure is rarer than the others it was released with. the difference in price now is all down to popularity - from what i have heard, klaatu was far rarer than most other rotj figures when he came out, yet is probably the cheapest now.

edd_jedi said:

klaatu was far rarer than most other rotj figures when he came out, yet is probably the cheapest now.

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I remember toy shops in Bradford with bins of carded Klaatus in the early 90s. I only bought one and took him off the card